UC Merced Magazine | Commemorative Chronicle

e moments feel like lightning — sudden, brilliant and seemingly impossible to predict. But those ashes of “a-ha” insight may be detectable before they happen.

cientists at UC Merced have developed a way to identify subtle behavioral changes that happen minutes before a breakthrough, opening a window into the elusive e study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Shadab Tabatabaeian, Ph.D. ’22 , who earned her doctorate in Cognitive and Information Science from UC Merced, is the lead author. Tyler Marghetis, professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences, is the senior author. eir work builds on theories from statistical physics and ecology to answer an old question with a modern twist: Can we spot the approach of a “eureka” moment in real time? “ is is one of those discoveries that was possible only because we made connections between very di erent scienti c disciplines,” Marghetis said. “We took ideas from ecology and physics, added tools from information theory and combined them with a century of work on the psychology of creativity. “ e resulting discovery belongs to all those disciplines and to none of them. It's its own thing.” mechanics of human creativity.

Can we spot the approach of a “eureka” moment in real time?